Although learning reps were forced to change their plans for this year’s Learning at Work Week, a packed online programme in the East Midlands proved that members haven’t lost their appetite for developing their skills

More than UNISON 170 members in the East Midlands signed up for a wide range of online learning courses taking place during this year’s Learning at Work Week (LaWW).

Regional Learning and Development Organiser Gavin McCann said:

We have seen a really positive response to us moving learning online that’s left me feeling very proud of how much our union learning reps and our branches have done in previous years to embed learning.”

When the regional team was forced to cancel its regional and county learning programmes, it decided to test the water by taking some of those courses online to coincide with this year’s online-only Learning at Work Week in May.

Gavin explained:

We advertised it to UNISON learning reps and branch secretaries and they have then been promoting the courses themselves using their own contacts lists as well as Facebook and Twitter.”

What’s been exciting has been seeing branches that haven’t been involved from a learning angle before tweeting about the courses because they’ve been keen to share something positive, which has helped them as well.”

The combined effort resulted in 170 applications for the various LaWW courses, which meant the team had to run them all twice to meet the demand and, in the case of the Makaton course, three times in all. In addition to Excel, staying safe online and Makaton – all courses that had proved popular in the original classroom-based programmes – five more courses were advertised during LaWW, including project management, website design, buying and selling online, mental health awareness (with The Open University) and an Excel improvers course.

To help learners get to grips with video-conferencing software very few were familiar with before lockdown, the team has been sending the links to each course a week in advance, encouraging learners to familiarise themselves with the platform.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive – including one learner who took part on day one of LaWW and emailed Gavin on day two to say they wanted to become a UNISON learning rep.

Gavin said:

I’ve been going into the courses and the reactions have been great: what I love has been seeing kids sitting down with their mums and dads so they too can learn about Excel while they’re off school.”

To build on the success of the online LaWW programme, Gavin and the team are now developing a new online regional programme for the second half of 2020. The plan is not only to move as many of the classroom courses online as possible but also to expand provision by incorporating some of the courses that have only appeared in the county programmes before.

Gavin summed up:

At a time when so many of our members are dealing with so many terrible things, this all comes back to the idea that education is hope.”

People want a positive way forward, something they can grab hold of that gives them a bit of hope in this time – and education is the best way of doing that.”